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macOS Ventura: latest stable release won't stop syncing

Quite a few messages on this forum have spelled out problems with Dropbox under Ventura: the main one being that macOS Spotlight won't open files in the new ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox folder. I've found a new problem:

For the past few days, Dropbox kept showing the "Syncing" message in the app and the syncing badge in the menubar icon. I tried shutting down, restarting, etc. Nothing worked. Finally I uninstalled Dropbox, partly following this page:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall

But that page doesn't match the new macOS version of Dropbox, so I ran the Find Any File app and searched for all files with Dropbox in their names (including hidden files) and trashed all of them, then ran Onyx to clean out my system, restarted, and reinstalled Dropbox.

This time, however, I used Bartender to hide the Dropbox icon with the red "1" on it, and did NOT let Dropbox update and move the Dropbox folder to ~/Library/CloudStorage.

Now, macOS Spotlight and find and open files in my ~/Dropbox folder, and all is well.

But this latest version of Dropbox for macOS is a total disaster, and Dropbox should refund a year's subscription for everyone who has wasted time and effort trying to get it right. This is really a disgraceful failure on Dropbox's part.

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Accepted answers

Hannah

I do understand where you're coming from, @emendelson.

The updated Dropbox for macOS app experience was developed to adhere to the requirement as set out by Apple and to ensure the best possible experience for our Mac users long into the future.

That being said, Dropbox support for macOS continues to develop and improve, so you can also keep an eye on this article for any updates.

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Hannah

Hey @emendelson, thanks for taking the time to post to our Community.

We appreciate your feedback about the Dropbox desktop app here and I'm glad to see that your issue was resolved after performing an advanced reinstall of the app.

I will make sure your comments are passed along to the appropriate people.

If you need anything else, please let us know.

emendelson

Thank you, Hannah. But the issues with the latest release are NOT resolved. As you know, because so many people have posted about it, if you let the latest release go ahead and move the Dropbox folder to ~/Library/CloudStorage, then you will not be able to open files from Spotlight.

These issues are absolutely NOT resolved, and the latest release of Dropbox for the Mac is a disaster for anyone who accepts the prompt to upgrade. That will be most users - and they will get nothing but trouble.

Again, these issues are NOT resolved!

Hannah

I do understand where you're coming from, @emendelson.

The updated Dropbox for macOS app experience was developed to adhere to the requirement as set out by Apple and to ensure the best possible experience for our Mac users long into the future.

That being said, Dropbox support for macOS continues to develop and improve, so you can also keep an eye on this article for any updates.

emendelson

Thank you, Hannah. On the page that you linked to, this statement appears:

"Search using Spotlight isn’t affected."

This, as many posts on this forum attest, is one-hundred-percent wrong, one-hundred-percent false, one-hundred-percent deceptive. Search using Spotlight is useless, because you can't open the file by clicking on the file in the Spotlight list of search hits.

If the fault is in macOS and not in Dropbox, someone should say so. Until then, all we know is that Dropbox rolled out an update that makes files effectively unfindable, and requires a thorough reinstall to fix it. Unfortunately, Dropbox's page about reinstalling has not been updated for the new macOS version, leading to further frustration.

Many of us are paying hard-earned money for Dropbox. We shouldn't be paying for the privilege of hours of work undoing the harm done by the software we're paying for.

meilanamusic

It's been a complete nightmare. I've tried everything and still it doesn't work properly. The app needs to be redesigned now to work with Ventura forcing the new Dropbox Folder location. It also causes the iCloud not to work properly so there's that as well.

emendelson

For other reasons, I created a new (testing-only) macOS installation using the latest beta version of Ventura, and search now works properly with Dropbox. I have no idea whether it will work correctly when the beta version is released and you upgrade Dropbox. In the meantime, I'm simply not updating Dropbox on my main system.